Craft Brew Supplement 2022

PRESENTS

CRAFT BREW

PACKAGING & PROCESSING INNOVATION

MARCH 2022

Photo Courtesy of Liam Goodman

Automation & Artistry

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 1 A supplement to Packaging World

Contents 2 Capable Filling and Seaming Anchor Self-Styled Farmhouse Canning Line

When adding canning capability, MacKinnon Brothers Brewing needed flexible filling and seaming operations that would reduce labor, improve precision, and speed throughput—all the while integrating into a home-built, highly customized line.

10 The Art of Scaling Up a Hazy IPA

Industrial Arts Brewing, a young craft brewer in New York’s Hudson Valley, was maxing out the capacity of its 25-hL brewhouse. A second, larger brewhouse from Krones Steinecker was highly customized to handle its hoppy brew.

18 Automated Cartoner Allows Craft Company to Thrive

Mother Earth Brewing Company is increasing throughput and improving quality with an automated cartoner, which is also helping them reach production goals amid labor shortages and pandemic woes.

26 Black-Owned Brewing Co. Opens Up Underserved Market

In an era when subservient, racially charged mascots are being shown the door, Moor’s Brewing ushers in a royal depiction of the untold story of Africa’s massive contribution to current craft brew culture.

32 Advertiser Index

PMMI Media Group 401 North Michigan Ave., Suite 1700, Chicago, IL 60611 Phone: 312/222-1010 • Fax: 312/222-1310 E-Mail: info@packworld.com • Web: www.packworld.com PMMI The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies 12930 Worldgate Dr., Suite 200, Herndon VA, 20170 Phone: 571/612-3200 • Fax: 703/243-8556 • Web: www.pmmi.org Staff at PMMI Media Group can be contacted at info@pmmimediagroup.com

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022

Capable Filling and Seaming Anchor Self-Styled Canning Line When adding canning capability, MacKinnon Brothers Brewing needed flexible filling and seaming operations that would reduce labor, improve precision, and speed throughput—all the while integrating into a home-built, highly customized line.

By Melissa Griffen, Contributing Editor, PMMI Media Group, and Matt Reynolds, Chief Editor, Packaging World

F

ounded in 2013 by brothers Ivan and Dan, MacKinnon Brothers Brewing Company is a farm-based operation, sourcing its fresh ingredients from its own farm and other local farms to produce unique beers. The facility is ideally located on a beautiful bicentennial family farm surrounded by fields of hops, barley, wheat, and corn in rural Ontario, Canada, just outside of the city of Kingston. Two of the company’s canned products are made entirely from ingredients grown on its farm.

MacKinnon Brothers is a true local brewery in the sense that it sells 80 to 85% of its products within a 50-km (30mile) radius of its facility. Product is also sold directly from the farm when it hosts concerts, music festivals, weddings, and other events. A QR code on the cans of its Harvest Ale variety educates consumers on the growing season, the malt from that season, and how those factors affect the flavor of the beer. But before guests even get to a taste what they’re learning about, the beautifully decorated cans make a farmfresh impression.

Stand-out can designs inspired by the farm The brewery began in a keg format, but as MacKinnon’s business grew, it expanded into cans. A 473-mL (16-oz) can format gave the brewery the chance to make a visual impression on customers, and it did so in spades.

At the outset of its pivot into cans, the MacKinnons enlisted design and branding agency RedRhino, Inc. in nearby London, Ontario. At that point, the company was only making two beers—8 Man English Pale Ale and Crosscut Traditional Canadian Ale. “We didn’t want a can that was really busy, with 500 awards and logos stamped on it,” Dan MacKinnon, co-owner and head brewer says. “We wanted something a bit simpler and something we could keep consistent across all of our offerings.”

With that opening salvo of direction, RedRhino sat down

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Can design for Philomena Pilsner celebrates the brothers’ grandmother Philomena, who used beer to bake her bread. with the brothers to find out what each beer made them think about. Even though the two young men were worldly and educated—Ivan is a mechanical engineer, and Dan had both brewed beer and played rugby in England—their roots, like the roots of the beers, are firmly planted on the Ontario farm. And the ideation session bore that out.

“We know what beers people want to drink around here, and what kind of beers we wanted to drink,” MacKinnon says. “The folks at RedRhino asked us, ‘Well, when would you drink a beer like Crosscut?’ And we answered, “If you’re out cutting wood someday, you might drink that beer.’ And 8

Watch a brief Take Five video about Canadian brewers’ experiences with both shrink sleeving and digitally printing on cans.

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a can design for each new beer.

Today, the company buys printed cans from Crown for its primary six beers, but there are a few lower volume or seasonal exceptions that might not meet an MOQ for a printed can order.

One example is the seasonal Wild Peppermint Stout.

“We use a company called Hart Print out of Quebec, they digitally print right on the can so they can do small runs. It’s more expensive per can, but it’s worth it.” MacKinnon says. “There are restrictions on shrink sleeves related to the recycling system. And I much prefer the printed can. I think it has a more premium feel. The shrink A wide view of the canning line, with cans being conveyed from depalletizer in sleeves have come a long way, but from the upper left to a canner and seaming station in the upper middle. A can dryer an environmental point of view and a and checkweigher are on the right, and cans enter accumulation in the foreground quality-feel point of view, I still prefer the before tray packing downstream. printed can.

“They are able to do low volumes, Man was the kind of beer I used to drink when I played rugby too, way less than we’re ordering,” he adds. “If we only want in England. We would drink that after the games. It’s a style only one or two pallets of cans or even half a pallet—say for of beer that wasn’t very well-represented in Canada, so we a batch from a 40-hL fermenter—then it makes sense to get wanted to help introduce it.” them from the digital printing.”

The pencil sketch-drawing design pattern that resulted is Counter-pressure integrated canning indeed simple but sophisticated. A single, centrally located line provides precise filling signifier or totem—a cross-section of a tree, or a vintage When turning to cans to augment what started as a take on a rugby player, respectively—communicates how the largely keg-based operations, filling and seaming equipment brothers felt about each of the beers and locates them in the was needed. To facilitate this, MacKinnon Brothers began MacKinnon’s life experiences. bringing in mobile canning in 2015, Since then, the brewery has however, as sales grew, this proved expanded to six mainstay or higher to be cost prohibitive. A few years volume varieties, and those offerings’ down the road, the company opened a respective can designs follow the same new production facility with an eye on initial design template that was forged purchasing its own reliable canning line with Crosscut and 8 Man. Philomena, to increase production, and save costs for instance, depicts the brothers’ and time wasted on manual canning. grandmother who they remember After exploring its options, the company used pilsner beer in her bread baking. decided on a counter-pressure unit with Naturally, the eponymous Philomena low dissolved oxygen from Pneumatic variety is a pilsner. Even more recently— Scale Angelus (PSA), and like a lot of brewery-related duties on a BW Packaging Systems Co. the farm, we’ll find out—design has been PSA’s CB50C counter-pressure taken in-house, and a team-member is integrated canning line uses now using the original template to create isobarometric counter-pressure Seasonal brews, like this Wild technology—for equal pressure Peppermint Stout, use digitally between can and product, maintaining printed cans with practically no MOQ. carbonation solubility throughout the MacKinnon prefers the look and feel filling process—coupled with proprietary of digitally printed cans to the shrink magnetic flowmeters, to deliver a sleeve alternative. system capable of 1-mL filling precision.

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 The CB50C counter-pressure integrated canning line uses isobarometric counter-pressure technology. walk-through directions. “PSA was right there all along the way to work with us,” MacKinnon says. “If there’s any issues with the machine or we thought this part wore out a little bit faster, or we think this could be changed, they were really willing to work with us and send us up replacement parts or improve parts or work with us on improving the machine.

If we had an idea, we could discuss with them about how we could implement an improvement.”

Referring to a specific issue the company encountered shortly after installation, MacKinnon says that the infeed was causing the cans to slide into the machine too quickly and not perfectly straight. PSA suggested an improved star wheel infeed of a different size that solved these issues; its programmers connected to MacKinnon Brothers’ internet to program the changes into the line once the new star wheel infeed arrived.

It employs six individual filling heads and a single-head seamer, and with the fill tank positioned above the fill heads, the product is gravity-fed to decrease the likelihood of agitation causing unwanted reductions in carbonation levels.

The line is rated for continuous operation at speeds up to 50 cans/min.

Technicians train and work with The purchase was solidified just before the start of operators to speed up production the pandemic, and installation was not hindered by the PSA offered MacKinnon Brothers three days of training, shutdown. but soon after MacKinnon Brothers experienced some “There weren’t any huge issues from COVID in regards company turnover which resulted in new employees to the installation and procurement of the machine,” says working with the CB50C. PSA trained the new employees MacKinnon. “It was a little trickier to get the folks from PSA and continued to remind them about the steps for proper up from the States. There was a bit more paperwork than there normally would be.”

MacKinnon further explained that the timing was perfect; due to the pandemic-related lockdowns and the resulting distribution challenges, the company was transitioning a large amount of products from kegs to cans, which would have been greatly hindered had installation been slowed.

The machine was installed at the MacKinnon Brothers facility within three months. MacKinnon explained that as the line ran into small mechanical hiccups, PSA has provided excellent customer service. He says PSA could FaceTime technicians to show them what the operators were doing and Downstream of the filler and seamer is a rinser, enclosed can dryer, and checkweigher how the machine was reacting, and prior to accumulation and tray packing downstream. the technicians could then provide

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 machine operation through FaceTime and emailed instructional documents. “We’re learning and they are understanding about that,” says MacKinnon. “They’re helping us get the machine running just right.”

MacKinnon says the operators took well to the machine.

“We were all thrilled to have our own canning line, to see the product moving. You’re really stacking up product and

that avoid product waste, which had been a significant issue with mobile canning. The brewing company has seen a reduction in damaged product coming off the line—another issue that was common with mobile canning. In addition, mobile canning had to be scheduled weeks to a month in advance and took time for setup. With this increase in flexibility, MacKinnon Brothers hopes to pursue its goal of continuing to increase the amount of ingredients grown on its own farm or sourced from local farms to produce a wider range of keg and canned products for its local community.

Farm-style approach to packaging line As mentioned earlier, the farm mentality at MacKinnon Brothers means that a lot of the packaging line design is a result of in-house modifications, customization, and just getting things to work by their own elbow-grease. Still, the brewery has a well-oiled machine of a can filling operation, anchored by the PSA filler and seamer.

The line begins with a Ska Can-IBus depalletizer, and cans are singlefiled into the line via a Ska twist shoot.

Before filling and while inverted, cans are air-rinsed and date coded.

“We went away from rinsing with water and instead put in a small air ionizer and filter ourselves that also UV light,” MacKinnon says. “The manufacturer is Takk Industries.

That decision was based off a bit of research and a really good talk we Four lanes of filled cans enter the tray packer from the accumulation table. All heard on different options for air sections of the line were assembled in-house. rinsing given by MBAA, the Master Brewers Association of the Americas.” draining those tanks fast with less downtime,” he says. “It’s The brothers also opted for a simpler design for a date a better quality of work, better quality of life. [The operators] coder, going with a local company called RN Mark. The unit get to go home earlier. No one wants to sit there packing codes the bottoms of the inverted cans as they pass through cans by hand. You want to start up a good machine, can a the twist shoot. whole bunch of beer, clean everything up, put the beer away, “Pricing-wise, it was so much more affordable and it’s and still have time for a nice enjoyable time at the end of the pretty simple,” MacKinnon says. “The cost-per-print is super day. And I think we’ve finally reached that.” low as well. Knock on wood, we haven’t had any issues with Gabrielle Charette Le Meur, production operator providing it once we got it set up.” quality control, quality management, and production Filling and seaming operations well-described already. management, adds, “With the machine, we eliminate a lot Upon exiting those operations, cans go through a quick rinse, of jobs that were redundant and I’m thrilled about getting to then a sharp 90-deg right turn toward an enclosed air dryer. know more how the machine works as I do problem solving.”

But before entering the dryer, a simple, home-engineered MacKinnon is pleased with the canning line’s benefits (remember, this is a farm) reject station uses sensors to such as the electromagnetic flowmeters for precise filling catch and reject cans that escaped filling without a seamed-

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 on lid. MacKinnon says these are rare, but better to have a system in place to catch these un-lidded, but full cans of beer before they enter the can dryer with its dual blowers.

Not catching them would make for a mess within the enclosed dryer space, and likely downtime.

“We got the dryer from China on Alibaba because the

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price was right, and it’s works amazing. The conveyor goes right through it,” MacKinnon says. “We knew the height of the conveyor that we had, so they custom-made the air dryer. We went with this rather than just using two air knives with one big blower and no shroud, that we would’ve just attached to the side of the conveyor, I found when I went to visit other breweries, that format was super noisy.”

Dried cans then undergo a QC check on an Anritsu checkweigher, a retread from another customized local manufacturing plant and purchased from Abbey Equipment in Canada. With can weights checked, they then enter an accumulation table that acts as an upstream buffer from an automated tray former and tray packer. Oddly enough, the tray former was originally built for bottles, and had served another brewery well in its first life. That other brewery switched from bottles to cans and decided to sell the bottle tray packer.

MacKinnon, who also runs cans, purchased the equipment, and retrofitted it for use as a can tray packer.

“It’s actually a really great unit and a really good value for the money,” MacKinnon says.

“Repurposing it actually wasn’t that much work. We changed some stuff in the programming, took some stuff out we added a suction head from Millibar to pick up the cans.

The cans are a little bit different size than the bottles, so we needed to resize the lanes, but it was mostly stuff that, with a piece of stainless steel and a zip disc, and a little bit of welding and some programming here, we can make.”

This farm-oriented re-use and re-purpose attitude might make some massive, ultra-fast line operators cringe, but it works well for MacKinnon Brothers Brewing.

Palletizing is done by hand, another hallmark of the hard work ethic at the brewery.

“For 50 cans a minute I mean, if I can’t keep up and stack those up, that’s on me,” MacKinnon says. ●

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The Art of Scaling Up a Hazy IPA Industrial Arts Brewing, a young craft brewer in New York’s Hudson Valley, was maxing out the capacity of its 25-hL brewhouse. A second, larger brewhouse from Krones Steinecker was highly customized to handle its hoppy brew.

By Aaron Hand, Editor-in-Chief, ProFood World

I

Photo Courtesy of Liam Goodman

ndustrial Arts Brewing began operations in the summer of 2016—in a sprawling pre-Civil War complex along the Hudson River in Garnerville, N.Y. “We were aiming to be a New York City area supplier of really fresh, hoppy beer.

We stumbled on a Hazy IPA as our flagship, and that’s sort of driven what we do,” says Jeff O’Neil, Industrial Arts founder and owner. The brewery’s Wrench IPA has had great success in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. “The fundamental difference between ours and a lot of the other ones that we’ve tried is ours is really dry and well fermented and has a decent amount of bitterness.”

The Garnerville plant operates with a 25-hL brewhouse from BrauKon and 100-barrel fermenters. Though happy with

the operation of the brewhouse, they were quickly running out of capacity. “We do our best to fill those fermenters. We brew high-gravity wort and dilute it in the whirlpool—we do everything that we can to max out the capacity there,” O’Neil says. “We’ve grown relatively fast over our first five years, so we’ve always been trying to squeeze a little bit more out of all of our resources.”

By its fifth anniversary, it was time for Industrial Arts to move beyond the limitations of its original Garnerville facility.

It expanded to a second facility in Beacon, N.Y., across the Hudson River, on the edge of town, where the brewer has turned an abandoned factory into a vibrant brewery campus.

Instead of a 25-hL brewhouse, the Beacon location has a 100-hL brewhouse—a CombiCube from Krones Steinecker.

It is a fully automated brewhouse capable of eight to 10 brews per day, depending on the wort gravity. And it’s had an immediate impact on Industrial Arts’ ability to get the most out of its raw materials and supply the market with its Wrench IPA and other brews.

“We are seeing some increased efficiencies and some really wonderful yields out of the CombiCube,” says Mike McManus, director of brewing operations for Industrial Arts.

“We built the CombiCube with Krones in order to cast out 100 hL with our flagship beer Wrench. But with every turn of Wrench, we’re getting a bit more than that. Yields have been excellent, and efficiencies have been as advertised or better.”

“At this bigger scale—100 hL vs. 25—we are getting much more efficient extraction from our malt, we are getting much more hop utilization from our bigger boil, and we’re getting better yields out of the conical sedimentation tank we have rather than the traditional whirlpool,” O’Neil says. “We’re squeezing significantly more extract out of every bit of barley, wheat, oats, and hops that we put into the system.”

The Industrial Arts hazy IPA

Industrial Arts was able to have its CombiCube brewhouse customized to optimize brewing of its flagship Wrench IPA.

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As a very hoppy, hazy IPA, the flagship Wrench presents some challenges in how the beer is made and thereby how the brewhouse is optimized. The CombiCube brewhouse from Krones Steinecker is designed for modularity, enabling brewers to put together a full system that works for its particular needs.

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Photo Courtesy of Liam Goodman

A mezzanine view of the 100-hL CombiCube brewhouse shows the included energy recovery system, which recovers steam energy from the boiling wort and gives it back as hot water to use for cleaning or the next batch of beer.

In the case of Industrial Arts, the process begins at the wet mill, where the pilsner malt and wheat get milled. That fills the mash kettle from the bottom with warm mash. The barley and wheat are blended into the mill while the oats drop down into a hydrator and get mixed in later in the mash kettle. The mash temperature is then ramped up before it’s pumped over to the lauter tun. The lauter tun runs to a receiving tank, which is a buffer tank used while the kettle is tied up. Once the kettle is clear of the previous batch, the next brew starts to fill again from the receiving side.

“We boil for 75 to 90 minutes, depending on the wort.

Then we have a heat exchanger between the wort kettle and the sedimentation tank which allows us to knock the temperature from 100°C down to 80°C. So we’re cooling that wort down a lot,” O’Neil explains. “And then we make that big hop addition that I talked about. We add almost no hops during the boil.”

The idea is to retain more of the aroma compounds from the flower. “It volatizes fewer of the aroma compounds, and it just creates a different perception than a traditional hotter whirlpool addition,” O’Neil says. “It definitely helps us to create a different character than every other brewer. There’s a lot of similarities between hazy IPAs. We use a lot of the same varieties of hops, a lot of the same sort of ratios, but

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we’re able to create some different layers and some different characteristics with this control in the brewhouse.”

After knocking the temperature down and making the hops addition, the mixture rests in a sedimentation tank.

After that, the wort is taken through a bed of whole hops flowers in a hop strainer, also known as a hop back, in order to maximize surface contact between the hot wort and the hops. The hop back was subcontracted out to Rolec.

The hop strainer, O’Neil explains, works much like a tea bag, with hop flowers placed inside a perforated wall.

“Then the wort flows through them from above—kind of showers down through a bed of flowers and hydrates those dry flowers and flows through the flower to get some more hop character,” he says. This gives the beer more of a floral character, he explains, and also a bit of a mouthfeel. And at the lower temperature provided by the heat exchanger, Industrial Arts is able to treat those hops a little more gently than most brewhouses are able to accomplish.

System optimization Throughout the brewhouse, Industrial Arts had special specifications that it needed along the way. The CombiCube’s modularity played into the ability to refine everything for the hazy IPA. “There are challenges that present in lauterability,

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022

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at Krones and Steinecker were able to engineer to our specifications for color and gravity and bitterness and volume cast,” O’Neil says. “It was a much more known target what we wanted to accomplish. We were able to pair the cast volume from this brewhouse with our fermentation tanks.

And with our new centrifuge and canning line, it’s all easier to imagine how these separate departments fit together when you know exactly what you’re making.”

There were some questions along the way about whether Industrial Arts would be pushing up against the limits of how much wort could fit into the kettle. “This is a 100-hL CombiCube, which I think at the time was the biggest size that they offered in this category,” O’Neil says. “They were worried about whether we could fit enough wort into the kettle to offset how much would be absorbed by our relatively very large whirlpool hop additions.”

Conical sedimentation One of the innovations of the Steinecker brewhouse ultimately installed in the Beacon facility was replacing the traditional whirlpool with a conical sedimentation tank. “I think when the German team saw our hop usage rates, their eyes kind of popped out of their heads, and they realized that we couldn’t yield 100 hL with this loading,” O’Neil recalls.

“So they approached it from a different angle to use this

Photo Courtesy of Liam Goodman

which is to say how fast the wort can flow through the lauter tun—because there’s such a high fraction of wheat and oats relative to traditional beers,” O’Neil says. “For instance, it’s a lot easier to make with a wider lauter tun.”

The brewhouse was specifically engineered for the barley malt and wheat to go through a wet mill, while the oats bypass the wet mill, joining the rest of the mash later in the mash kettle. “We’re very conscious of how those grist percentages affect flowability through the process,” O’Neil explains. “Thusly, the lauter tun is engineered specifically for our flagship beer, Wrench.”

When a brewer has a flagship beer, it’s important to understand how to make that flagship in the most efficient way possible. When Industrial Arts began working with BrauKon six or seven years ago, the plan then was that the flagship beer would be a really drinkable pale ale, O’Neil says. “And we designed that brewhouse to make that wort over and over and over again.”

But things didn’t turn out as planned, and it ended up being the Wrench IPA that really took off and became the company’s flagship. So in the Garnerville facility, the team has had to make some adjustments to the lauter tun along the way to get it to flow better and to optimize the fermentation space. “So this time, in the second brewhouse, we knew for sure what we wanted to make. And the team

Compared with its 25-hL brewhouse at its original facility, Industrial Arts’ new 100-hL brewhouse achieves more efficient extraction and hops utilization because of its bigger scale.

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 chemical usage and less downtime for cleaning,” O’Neil says.

Though it is difficult to quantify at this early stage, he points in particular to the time spent handling chemicals. “That’s a difference between a very small brewery that just has to do this stuff manually. And then at this scale, it’s just not practical or safe to handle the quantity of caustic detergents that we need to keep something like this clean.” The system is almost four times more efficient from a labor standpoint, he adds.

Photo Courtesy of Liam Goodman

conical sedimentation tank rather than a whirlpool.”

Virtually every brewhouse includes a whirlpool—a simple, wide, round tank with a flat bottom, where the wort from the boil kettle is pumped into a tangential path. This creates a whirlpool effect, forcing the solids into a pile at the center of the tank. Then the clear wort is decanted from the side of the tank.

The conical tank, instead, is more like a brewery fermenter, O’Neil explains, with the conical bottom forcing the solids to the bottom. “So in this brewhouse that we have, the system dumps the solids rather than decanting the liquid,” he says, adding that, with this system, Industrial Arts is able to lose less of the wort.

“Once they got over the initial shock of the sheer volume of hops that we use, they started down this path,” O’Neil says. “And I’m here to tell you that it works.

Where the contract was for 100 hL of cast wort in spec, we are routinely getting 106 or 108 out of this flagship beer.” Instead of the roughly 170 hL (about 150 barrels) of finished beer expected after fermentation, Industrial Arts is yielding 200 hL. “Which is really beyond any expectation that we ever had.”

Recovering vapor for energy and cleaning Some other special systems included in the Industrial Arts brewhouse are an energy recovery vapor condenser and an automated clean-in-place (CIP) system.

“Everybody’s got a boil kettle, The high volume of hops used to make Industrial Arts’ hazy IPA required some but not everyone has an energy innovative thinking to optimize brewing. recovery vapor condenser,” O’Neil says. “Almost all the steam energy Process control and that we are using to boil the wort, we get almost all of that batching automation back in the form of hot water. Then we use that hot water for Automation also comes in the form of the Botec F1 cleaning or for the next batch of beer—it just goes back to a process control system. Though Industrial Arts could have big, warm water holding tank.” gone with a more universal control system, a colleague had That’s something that Industrial Arts has at its original recently installed a Krones brewhouse and was happy with Garnerville brewhouse as well. “From the beginning, we’ve the proprietary Botec software, O’Neil notes. been really, really efficient with our usage of water and The smaller brewhouse in Garnerville is automated to a energy,” O’Neil adds. lesser degree with BrauKon’s proprietary control system.

The automated CIP system, however, is a new feature “Botec is a pretty big step up as far as automation is for Industrial Arts. “That’s an investment in efficiencies that concerned,” McManus says. “We have a lot of granular we didn’t make in our first plant that has paid off in less

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022

control over process and throughput, and the trending and batch protocol are really fabulous. And we can use historical data to inform our process decisions when we’re working out a new recipe or a new process.”

The level of automation enables the operator to spend less time turning valves, focusing efforts more on monitoring the process more closely. “With an automated system, you have the ability to drill in and really dial in pHs and temperatures—the small things that make a big impact over the long term with flavor and beer stability,” McManus says. “Also, it provides a level of repeatability that is the hallmark of what you’re trying to do in brewing—get it right, and then do it over and over.”

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The Industrial Arts brewhouse is already pretty loaded, O’Neil says, so he doesn’t think there’s much they might still add. But the modularity of the CombiCube nonetheless provides some key flexibility. “The way it’s engineered, where there’s access to everything, if you wanted to do something wild like add a second kettle or some other piece of equipment like that, they would be able to splice that in,” he says.

O’Neil was impressed with the flexibility of the Krones Steinecker team as well. “Maybe it’s just that philosophy of being modular, but it’s really helpful that it’s not a rigid approach,” he says. “This was a very cooperative project, and they really wanted to make our wort. They did not try to tell us what our wort should be like, but they did tell us that some of our engineering ideas were insufficient.” O’Neil also adds, “They found solutions for the things that were really important to us that they weren’t necessarily offering if we didn’t ask.”

A key factor giving Steinecker the edge for a brewery like Industrial Arts is that it understands the operations of large-scale facilities and is applying those same principles for craft brewers, shrinking the technology down as needed, O’Neil notes.

“I think that gives them an edge vs. some of the smaller, more craft-oriented suppliers who are trying to scale up,” he says. Twenty years ago, the kinds of technologies that Steinecker offers were only available on the biggest systems. “That’s one of the things that has set our brewery apart is that we’ve been a small brewery operating more like a bigger one, using technology, using control, inventory tracking software—all the tools that we could find to make us better, more efficient at what we’re doing…hopefully with the result of delivering the freshest, most flavorful and hoppiest beer to the market.” ●

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Automated Cartoner Allows Craft Company to Thrive Mother Earth Brewing Company is increasing throughput and improving quality with an automated cartoner, which is also helping them reach production goals amid labor shortages and pandemic woes.

By Natalie Craig, Features Editor

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other Earth Brewing Company started as a hobby for Daniel and Jon Love, and Kamron Khannakhjavani in 2010 in San Diego. The company operated out of 2200-sq.-ft.-industrial space, which allowed the business to grow quickly and for the company to begin self-distribution of 22-oz. bottles and kegs to stores, bars, and restaurants. A large taphouse in Vista, Calif. followed and gave the company more opportunities to expand its production spaces—adding nearly 28,000 sq. ft.

The brewer entered major distribution in late 2013. After double-digit growth in 2014, Daniel Love wanted to expand operations but had a hard time doing business and finding new opportunities for growth in Southern California.

“It’s just not a business-friendly state for someone of our size, less than a hundred employees,” Daniel Love says.

Mother Earth Brewing Company upgraded to a Ska Double Eagle depalletizer in 2020 (left). The company invested in an Econocorp Spartan cartoner (above), which allowed them to automate the case and tray erecting and packing.

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19 Expanding up north So, as many Californians do, Daniel Love headed up north to Boise, Idaho where he found plenty of opportunities to partner with the local government and initiatives that supported small businesses like his.

The company built a 40,000-sq.-ft. production facility 15 miles west of Boise in the neighboring city of Nampa, which provided them a lot of space to sprawl.

The facility houses a 40 beer barrel volume (bbl) multi-vessel Mueller brewhouse, and the capacity to produce more than 100,000 bbls a year, becoming one of the largest breweries in Idaho, according to the company. The Nampa production facility supports most of the company’s growth and produces beer for all markets outside Southern California. The original Vista brewery continues to provide draft and specialty offerings to its home market while also managing the creation of one-off brews for visitors at its retail operations in North County San Diego.

Under the brand, there are eight different year-round beers, including its claim to fame, the Cali Creamin’ vanilla cream ale.

“It sounds like it might be sweet, but it’s a dry beer,” says Daniel Love.

“We use Madagascar vanilla bean instead of using hops. It is very special and unique. Nobody else does this type of beer.”

good as the company puts out about 10 million cans per year.

In March of 2020, the company brought one of its Wild Goose canning machines up to Nampa—where it already had another of the same machine—from its California location, which allowed them to ramp up to 80 cans/min.

The company spends 70% of its time running 24-count

Automated cartoner allows Mother Earth to scale amid pandemic woes As the COVID-19 pandemic began, it also created a few obstacles for the craft company during its record growth. Its tasting room in California shuttered, but the company kept its draft beer brewery operation in Vista to keep distribution flowing in Southern California via Stone Brewing. Currently, the Nampa facility still distributes to 20 different states and 11 different countries, while also filling in where the Vista brewery can’t. All in all, business is

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 mix packs and the other 30% of the time running 12-packs with its Cali Creamin’, Tierra Madre, and Boo Koo beers. Up until recently, the packing was handled manually, but record labor shortages and the amount of variety necessitated automation.

The company invested in an Econocorp Spartan cartoner, which allowed it to automate the case and tray erecting and packing.

“We do a lot of stuff in 24-pack trays,” says Chris Baker, director of brewing operations. “But we were also trying to touch on that carton side of the business. We wanted something that would do both because, individually, the two machines are expensive. So, getting something that was a good bridge between them was what we were looking for, and the Spartan really covered that.”

Not only was the company packaging both 12-pack cartons and 24-pack trays for its different beers, but some brands added in the complexity of having both 12- and 16-oz cans. This necessitated a cartoner that allowed them to changeover often with ease. Now, they can change the Econocorp cartoner over in less than 20 minutes, which doesn’t negatively impact production goals.

“We’re kind of all over the place, so packaging needs to be pretty nimble so that we can get onto one brand and

The cans run through two separate Wild Goose WGC 250 canning lines, where cans are rinsed and sanitized by two twist rinsers, filled, and seamed. knock out four different formats and then get into another brand,” Baker says.

It was also important to find a cartoner that could keep up with their current canning line capabilities but also adapt to a larger and faster operation as the company grows.

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“We want to look at 200 to 250 cans per minute next, and this machine can keep up with it,” Baker says. “At our size, that’s a tough machine to find, because the reality was everyone else wanted to sell us something that would either work for the next six months or be so expensive and so overthe-top that it would be overkill for the next year or whatever it takes us to get into a bigger line.

This is something we can grow into and expand upon pretty easily.”

Check out Mother Earth Brewing Company’s line in action and get a look inside their Nampa production facility.

How the line works together The Econocorp cartoner is the latest addition to Mother Earth Brewing’s filling and packaging line, but there is a lot more going on upstream keeping the company at its target of 80 cans/min.

The company runs two separate lines, starting with a Ska Double Eagle depalletizer, to which the company upgraded in 2020. The cans run through two separate Wild Goose WGC 250 canning lines, where cans are rinsed and sanitized by two twist rinsers, filled, and seamed. Mother Earth has been running its Wild Goose lines for the past six years.

“There are an infinite number of adjustments and ability to adjust things,” Baker says. “If I run a milk stout, I can slow my belts down to give it time to foam out how I want.

It’s more versatile. While I can’t run super high carbonation levels, I can run nitro beers. We run everything through that.”

Custom conveyance brings the two lines together to apply datecodes using Domino A320i ink jet printers through a Heuft Basic low fill/low pressure detector, a Chart Industries nitrogen doser, an Anton Paar CBox, and a Zahm piercing unit to check dissolved oxygen levels.

“Along with the Anton Paar CBox, we do have a very extensive laboratory, and a lot of breweries our size don’t have that,” Daniel Love says. “We do pull off a number of cans in line at the beginning, the middle, and the end and we store them warm, cold, and hot. We taste those about every other Friday with

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 our brewers, so we have an extensive ability to react to somebody if they get a [off-flavor] beer and they light us up on Facebook or send us an email. We know before we put something in the can that the product is going to be exactly what it needs to be and there aren’t going to be any inconsistencies in it.”

After the cans run through inspection, they are fed onto an accumulation table, which allows the company to keep fillers running if equipment backs up or slows downstream.

“We try to think the setup through so that we could add in bigger pieces without having to change everything,” Baker says.

For higher volume beers like the Cali Creamin’, Mother Earth uses printed cans, which run straight into a PakTech can carrier applicator 120/180 from the accumulation table. The applicator can be configured for a six-pack or four-pack.

Custom conveyance brings the two Wild Goose lines together and sends cans through a Heuft Basic low fill/ low pressure detector.

For lower volume beers that may not meet printed can supplier minimum order quantities (MOQ) like Project X, which is a year-round rotating beer that has new labels and new artwork all the time, Mother Earth can side-stream these cans to a Pack Leader PL-501 can labeler, which applies pressure sensitive labels from local Boise-based label maker Action Quality Printers.

From there, a long infeed conveyor brings cans to the Econocorp cartoner.

“We set it up so that we could put some tables on it and make that feed pretty easily.” Baker says, “We set these tables along the side, and then we just push these on with

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these lanes and we now have the ability to either do six varieties, four cans of each. We could do two varieties, with 12 each, or we could do two varieties, six each, and a 12pack. We can do literally anything we want.”

Then, a four-foot conveyor leads cans to another Domino A320i date-coder to code the outside of the cartons.

“Some brands are still missing on that front and it’s really frustrating to buy a 12-pack of an IPA, you’re really excited, take it home, and realize it’s really old,” Baker says. “So, we code the outside of those.”

A gravity feed conveyor takes the cans to a stop point where three to four people hand-stack cases onto a pallet in preparation for the company’s pallet wrapper.

What’s next for Mother Earth As the company continues to scale, Daniel Love and Baker are building flexibility into their operations and line so that when the time comes, they can ramp up to 200 to 250 cans/min. But they are also keeping an eye on quality. Along with its extensive testing, the company has also developed

MORE CRAFT BREWING AND DISTILLING RESOURCES

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 an internal shelf life assessment called 30, 60, 90 where they test the beers 30 days after packaging, 60 days after packaging, and 90 days after packaging, as well as under different conditions.

WEIMA PMMI E200 Ad.pdf what’s 1 2/10/2022 10:50:33 AM “Knowing going on with your product as it goes through its life cycle is important,” Baker says. “Now, if

somebody brought us a beer and they’re like, ‘What’s wrong with this?’ I could tell you just from the taste how old it is, how many days it’s been warm, and how it’s been stored.

The reality of it is once the beer leaves your facility, you really don’t know what happens to it.”

Mother Earth’s lifecycle analysis, which provides valuable

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Cans on their way into a PakTech can carrier applicator 120/180. The applicator can be configured for a six-pack or four-pack. From there, a long infeed conveyor brings cans to the Econocorp cartoner. insights on beer quality even after it leaves the brewery, helps identify and account for distribution issues that could negatively impact a beer that left the facility fresh and delicious. These steps improve insight into the whole operation and inform the company on how to keep quality as high as its fans expect. ●

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Black-Owned Brewing Co. Opens Up Underserved Market In an era when subservient, racially charged mascots are being shown the door, Moor’s Brewing ushers in a royal depiction of the untold story of Africa’s massive contribution to current craft brew culture.

By Matt Reynolds, Chief Editor

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hen you think of demographics making up the craft beer market—both its consumers and its producers—a suite of social stereotypes likely leaps to mind. If people were forced to describe or sketch a craft brew persona, most would likely come up with a casually dressed, outdoorsy, and oftentimes bearded or tattooed white Gen X man with disposable income. That’s not necessarily a value judgement or an indictment on the industry; a trip to the annual Craft Brewers’ Conference bears out this rule of thumb. By and large, that’s just who has traditionally represented the craft beer industry. The Craft Brewer’s Association knows this, and is working to become more diverse—both because it’s the right thing to do, and because they need to address changing demographics to stay relevant.

At the Craft Brew Conference last year in Denver, Craft Brewers Association economist Bart Watson revealed that in 2019, the number of young women who drink surpassed the number of young men who drink. This doesn’t take volume into consideration—young men drink more in volume. But you have to wonder what craft beer might do for women, who have historically been groomed for wine, and who now have options in the RTD spirits beverages alongside seltzers and other non-beer options?

Also, according to a study by Rabobank that Watson referenced, “Spending [in alcohol] is increasingly female, and spending is increasingly BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).” Some might say that overall U.S. demographics are doing the same, but those spending increases were happening even faster than that. Craft brewers are asking themselves, “how can we get out to

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those ‘new’ markets that have greater buying power?”

The Association is convening the BRU (Brewing, Respect, Unity) Coalition, designed to foster an equitable and inclusive brewing community. Read more about these and other programs from the Brewers Association at pwgo.to/7500 but suffice it to say they are largely aimed at social equity and inclusivity. The craft brewing industry as a whole is aware of its demographic makeup and is working to become more inclusive.

Meanwhile, in Miami…

Damon Patton, who attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (and for the purposes of the demographics in question, is a young black man) was enjoying the weather in South Florida and making his own hours as an Uber driver.

His concept of who makes up the craft brew market matched the one we just described, but it wasn’t something he thought much about—at least until one Uber delivery got him thinking.

“I delivered an order of beer to a party in an upscale villa on Miami Beach,” Patton says. “I wasn’t expecting it, but enjoying the beer there were 30 to 45 black people. And I was dropping off a bunch of beer—it was at least 12, maybe 15 cases. I just asked the question, ‘Is this beer for you guys?’ They said, ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t it be for us?’ It was at that point that I thought, ‘I think we can probably sell beer [to the black community].’”

Patton reached out to college friend and entrepreneurial collaborator Jamhal Johnson, a fellow young black man and U of I grad, to kick off the idea. The black community has been traditionally underserved by the craft brew market, but

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 Johnson and Patton are seeking to change that. And they don’t mean to do so by asking the existing market to better cater to black people. Instead, they’re diving into the craft brew market, as a black-owned business, to help make a market and build a business that they themselves control.

An early hurdle was overcoming the dismissive reason

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why the market had been underserved. Rightly or wrongly— and the following sentiment contains implicit bias—the industry perceived a price sensitivity in the black community as an obstacle. But Patton says that the industry was missing the boat by internalizing that vaguely racist rule of thumb.

Consider the party at the fancy Miami Beach villa; there was not a lot of price sensitivity at that occasion.

“The craft beer industry hasn’t really marketed to the African American community specifically,” says Patton. “The recent advent of these African American-owned craft breweries that are coming on, we’ve seen a little bit more of it, but traditionally, it just hasn’t been there.

The Uber delivery led us to believe that we could actually sell product to the African American community, it just had never really been tried before.”

What resulted from the collaboration became Chicago’s

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Moor’s Brewing Co., with a tagline reading as follows: Less than 1% of the craft brewing industry is African Americanowned. We are Chicago’s Black Owned craft brewing company, established Juneteenth 2021.

The name and marketing are built on a historical king. In 711 A.D., King Tariq Ibn Ziyad led Moors of Berber decent across the strait of Gibraltar between Africa and Europe—conquering Spain for the next 700 years. They introduced new scientific techniques to the European culture, including a distillation and fermentation process that produced what they called al-kuhl. This beer pays homage to the rich untold history of its African ancestry and the original craft brewers.

The social moment of 2021 was a cauldron of change that helped accelerate things for the brand.

“At the height of COVID-19 and civic unrest following the George Floyd incident, more focus was being placed on diversity and inclusion,” Johnson says. “The craft beer industry presented a great opportunity for diversity from both the supplier and consumer perspectives.”

people of color were kings and queens,” Johnson says. “We wanted our brand to represent black excellence and original craftsmanship; paying homage to the Africans that civilized Europe via spirits, infusing our post-modern artistry.

“Our target market is brand loyal, and I felt that we needed to be brand forward, using a name, imagery, and

Packaging and imagery There has been much discussion around brands retiring racially charged mascots. Whether Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemimah, a common theme of these mascots has been their polite, respectful subservience as servants, cooks, or housekeepers.

Moor’s Brewing Co.’s 16-oz. brightstock cans, on the other hand, use a pressure-sensitive label depicting King Ziyad, a black man who was a conqueror and deliverer of science innovation, a far cry from the subservient, conquered mascot. The can art comes from the 16th century Dutch painter Hendrik Heerschop’s “The African King Caspar.” Moor’s added the postmodern hip hop flare to make the image their own.

“In light of social injustice, we wanted to remind the community of its rich regal history; a time when

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CRAFT BREW INNOVATION MARCH 2022 messaging that resonated with our target market, expanding the space,” he adds. “Creating a badge brand of beers that satisfies a discerning palate, hence Moor’s Beer. Most breweries are into making a lot of different beers, which is appealing to the beer enthusiast community. However, to bring more African Americans into the fold, we wanted to

use a different approach; thus, leaning into the culture.”

Adds Patton: “I just had never seen a Black man exhibited regally on a can of beer. That was something that was important to us to make sure that that messaging came across, especially in a time where you’re seeing a lot more attention paid to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

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Junteenth 2021, the June 19th holiday that celebrates the freedom of enslaved people in the U.S. at the end of the Civil War, was a no-brainer for a product launch. But the idea had only really come together in January, so launching in such a tight window was difficult.

“As you can imagine, we faced many challenges just to make it to market on that day; from last-minute changes to inbound delivery issues to distribution,” Johnson says. “But we knew that launching that day would be instrumental and ironically that day was made a national holiday.

Fortunately, we were able to be in stores on that day despite all challenges.”

The duo was able to thread the needle with the help of a fellow black-owned business, who acted as a co-manufacturer and co-packer for the brewery.

“We just put our heads down and worked with Drew Fox over at 18th Street Brewing [in nearby Hammond, Indiana],” Patton adds. “The marketing all was tailored to make sure that we all had a Juneteenth mindset, that we could actually make that date, but it’d been on the board since January of 2021, or even before then.”

The partnership with 18th Street was a useful first step, and allowed the brewery to make a splash and grand entrance on a holiday amid a growing social movement. Next up for Moor’s Brewing Co. will be a state-of-the-art production facility, likely including taproom. Details are being kept quiet at the moment, but expect news within the next year to 18 months.

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Read about another black-owned brewery, Crown’s and Hops in Inglewood, Calif., and how race, politics, and inclusion intersect over a lager at an upscale neighborhood brewhouse.

Also important to remember, while Moor’s is a black-owned brewery, and while it is taking square aim at an untapped, underserved African American beer drinkers market, it’s by no means meant to be exclusive to that community.

Exclusivity is neither the goal in the larger social sense, nor in the practical sales volume sense.

“We started looking into the numbers, and we noticed that only 3% of beer buyers happen to be African American. We told ourselves, ‘OK, well we’ll just take that niche.’

Then we started realizing you need more than just that niche to be a profitable entity, so we folded everybody in again,” Patton says.

“The genesis of it was just noticing that the numbers were really skewed in the other direction. It’s like less than 1% of the craft beer industry is African American-owned. That right there was when we said to ourselves, ‘Oh, dude, we got a crack at this. This is our Jackie Robinson moment.’” ●

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